Beijing has announced the cancellation of the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations due to the "Corona" viral disease, which has so far claimed 17 lives in China, according to Agence France-Presse.

The New Year holidays in China begin on Friday and last for a week. Typically, hundreds of thousands of Beijing residents gather on parks to watch the traditional lion and dragon dance.

Many Chinese canceled their trips, bought protective masks, avoided public places such as cinemas and malls, and even resorted to a computer game that simulated the virus.

Seven new films were canceled during the New Year holidays, which is an important season for distributors and cinemas to attract large numbers of audiences.

China has taken extreme measures to combat the emerging corona virus, which has begun to circulate in other countries of the world, causing a de facto quarantine on the city of Wuhan, which is the source of the disease, in addition to a neighboring city, starting today, Thursday.

From 10:00 a.m. local time (0200 GMT), it is prohibited, in principle, for any train or plane to leave Wuhan (11 million people) in central China.

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Heart of the epidemic
The city on the banks of the Yangtze River is at the heart of the disease, which has infected more than 500 people since last December and has killed 17 people, according to the latest toll released on Wednesday evening. All deaths occurred in Wuhan or its region.

"The population should not leave Wuhan without a specific reason," declared the general rapporteur in charge of fighting the epidemic at the municipal level.

He explained that this decision was taken with the aim of preventing the virus from spreading extensively, especially as China is preparing to enter its long vacation on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, which witnesses every year the movement of hundreds of millions of people.

In turn, Huangang City municipality (7.5 million people) 70 km east of Wuhan, announced that the movement of the trains will stop at the end of the day until the next notification. The city of Izhou (1.1 million people) also closed its train station.

"The closure of Wuhan is an unprecedented measure in the history of public health, and it certainly has not been done on the recommendation of the organization," Godin Geliya, the WHO representative in China, told Reuters.

On Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled action to counter the spread of the new Coronavirus, calling for a "firm" response to the disease that was not yet a big news item.

Very strong procedures
In Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanum Gebresus welcomed the "very strong measures" taken by China, saying it would "reduce" the risks of the global spread of the virus.

The measures came while the WHO was holding a meeting of its emergency committee to decide if the new virus would constitute "a public health emergency on an international scale."

The experts were unable to reach an agreement in this regard, so the director of the organization decided to continue the meeting today, Thursday, from eleven GMT.

The term "global emergency" has so far been used only in rare epidemics requiring a firm international response, including the swine flu "H1N1" in 2009, the "Zika" virus in 2016, and Ebola, which swept a part of West Africa between 2014 and 2016 and the Republic of the Congo Democracy 2018.

The new disease - from the Corona Virus family to which the SARS virus (Acute Respiratory Syndrome) belongs - has reached many Asian countries and even the United States, where some infections have been recorded.

Body temperature monitoring has been mainstreamed in several Asian airports, and in Dubai, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Italy.

A medical staff attends a patient with the new coronavirus at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University (Reuters)

Illegal trade
The virus was detected in a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan. Its exact source is unknown, but the incubation period for it is assumed to be approximately 14 days.

The National Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that illegal sales of predators occurred in this market, without being able to say for sure whether these animals were the source of the disease.

There is no known cure for this virus, which is transmitted through breathing.

Initial research indicates that the virus was transmitted to humans through snakes, but government medical advisor Zhong Nanshan also mentioned badger and mouse animals as possible sources of the virus.